Senator Tackles Loneliness ​“Epidemic”

Can we talk? About how lonely and disconnected so many of us feel?

Chris Murphy hopes so. Otherwise, he worries, we won’t be able to come together as a nation to tackle challenges ranging from mass shootings to opioid addiction to teen suicide and social-media bullying to political polarization.

Murphy, one of Connecticut’s two U.S. senators, has embarked on a mission to ignite that conversation. He has written articles and done interviews about the need to tackle America’s ​“loneliness epidemic” in publications ranging from Time and the Atlantic and the liberal New Republic to the conservative Bulwark.

He spoke about it as well the other day during an interview on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

We have ​“an unmistakable crisis in this country,” Murphy said. ​“If you look at the number of teenagers that are feeling lonely or alone, the number of teenagers that are contemplating doing harm to themselves, it’s at real epidemic levels. But you also see elevated levels of loneliness amongst adults, as well, especially adults who are living further away from population centers.”

In one survey, by the Centers for Disease Control, 57 percent of high school girls reported feeling ​“persistently sad or hopeless,” Murphy noted in one recent article, and 22 percent of high schoolers reported having seriously considered suicide.

If we can have ​“a metaphysical conversation” about loneliness and hopelessness, he said, ​“we’ll find that the way that we’re feeling on both the right and the left is strikingly similar. We’re feeling alone and lonely. Often, that has nothing to do with your politics. We’re feeling frustrated that we have less economic control, we’re working harder and getting less. That exists on both sides of the debate. We’re feeling kind of frustrated by the commodification of everything, the way that Amazon and Google have just turned everything into a commodity and put a price on everything in our lives.

“So I think all those feelings unite us. And if we spent some time just talking about that, then maybe it’s easier for us to create a common political and policy agenda.”

Murphy, a progressive Democrat, is testing his proposition by seeking to work with conservative Republicans on common-ground legislative responses to the ​“unhealthy behaviors” and ​“toxic anger and hate” arising from all this ennui and despair.

Last year he forged a bipartisan compromise to advance gun safety in response to mass shootings. (Read about that here.)

This past week Murphy introduced a Protecting Kids on Social Media Act in conjunction with Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz and Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and Katie Britt. The bill would ban kids under 13 from using social media and require parental permission for 13 to 17-year-olds. It would also bar Facebook or Twitter or TikTok et al. from using algorithms to push users under 18 toward recommended content. 

“For a long time, we thought that online connection was going to be just as fulfilling as in-person connection — our ability to find new communities and new people to connect with online,” the senator reflected.

“Years into this social media experiment, we have learned that’s actually not true. That there’s actually something much less fulfilling and rewarding about online connection. And that, in fact, that online community often drives us to polarization and behavior much more quickly than happens when we engage in person.”

Politicians have sought before to inject ​“metaphysical” debates about common purpose into the otherwise soulless realm of politics. Hillary Clinton, for instance, linked with Rabbi Michael Lerner in 1993 to promote a ​“politics of meaning” before moving on to other strategies.

Murphy said part of his strategy involves modifying his own behavior. As he embarks on a campaign for a third term in office, he said, he plans to be a less ​“incendiary presence on social media” than in the past: ​“I will still punch Republicans in the mouth when I think they’re picking on gay kids or, you know, trying to bankrupt the country. But I also catch myself sometimes more than I used to, in communications, I might send that out just for provocation’s sake.” And he will continue to work with rather than demonize Republicans or others with whom he disagrees, he vowed.

Click on the above video to watch the full conversation with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of ​“Dateline.”